Medical knowledge on detecting and influencing disease processes have increased significantly in the last decennia. Advancing diagnostic technologies increasingly allow for earlier diagnosis and provide options for earlier and theoretically more effective treatment. Although most of the new advanced diagnostic methods are very useful to confirm a diagnosis in high risk individuals, they are, unfortunately, often still too costly and/or invasive and/or inconvenient and/or not specific enough (leading to false positive results, medicalization and increased healthcare costs) to provide to the general average risk population for early diagnostic and screening purposes. Therefore, new methods that can simplify the diagnostic procedure while maintaining high levels of sensitivity, specificity, minimal false-positive results and not being too costly are increasingly demanded. Furthermore, too improve the feasibility of diagnostic tests in a screening setting (to select those individuals for whom further (and more invasive) testing will be useful) they need to be as client/patient friendly, cheap and easy to use as possible. Each barrier, such as visiting a laboratory or medical centre, to have the test performed will influence the participation rate and is (cost-)inefficient. Empowerment of the individual with a trustworthy device that can be easily and safely used at home and that will only signal the subject if further action is needed, would be useful and efficient.
WO-A-2007/113838 discloses a swallowable device for detecting in vivo the presence of a condition. The device comprises a nanocontainer wherein a small amount of dye is received. As a direct result of detecting the condition, the small content of nanocontainers is released and a local colouring can be observed.